I had begun publishing
in Leo Margulies' SATELLITE SCIENCE FICTION a series of
critical/historical/biographical
pieces centered around authors that would eventualy be collected in my
book EXPLORERES OF THE INFINITE (World, 1963). When SATELLITE
SCIENCE
FICTION discontinued publication, I had several articles already
written
and a number of others in the planning stage and was looking for
another
market that might be interested in publishing them. Henry
Morrison,
then working for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency suggested I try
AMAZING
STORIES and FANTASTIC SCIENCE FICTION whose editors, Norman Lobsenz and
Cele Goldsmith, had told him they were looking for material to give the
magazines a more serious tone. In 1960 they agreed to buy six
articles
from me on the following literary figures: Hugo Gernsback,
H.P. Lovecraft,
Olaf Stapledon, M.P. Shiel, Karel Capek and Philip Wylie.
Beginning
in 1960, the Gernsback article was published in AMAZING STORIES and the
other five in FANTASTIC SCIENCE FICTION. That was presumably
to be
the end of it. However, in January, 1961, Lobsenz and
Goldsmith asked
me to drop by the office and talk to them. They said the
circulation
on the issues of FANTASTIC with my five articles had increased roughly
four thousand copies and held. Apparently I had pulled that
many
former readers of SATELLITE SCIENCE FICTION who had read the earlier
articles
in that magazine. They wanted me to do twenty-four a year,
twelve
for each magazine.

I was working
full time supervising a staff of five editors for E.W. Williams
Publications
and told them I simply couldn't do more than six a year, since each
article
involved reading every work the author covered had written and every
known
bit of information about them, in addition to personally contacting
them
if they were still alive. We agreed on six a year to be run
every
other month in AMAZING STORIES and these were to be on contemporary
leaders
such as Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac
Asimov
and so on. I also agreed to select a reprint a month and
supply an
historical introduction for each magazine.

The first author
to be profiled was Robert A. Heinlein. I owned and read
everything
by Heinlein published through to 1961 as well as everything written
about
him. I had first personally met him at the June 2, 1940
meeting of
The Queens Science Fiction League Chapter in Astoria, New
York. At
that time he gave a talk outlining his career to that date and
comparing
the Queens Chapter to the one in Los Angeles. I met him again
in
1954 and had minor business dealings involving books which tied in with
Vol Molsworth, an Australian fan.

I wrote to Heinlein
in Colorado Springs, Colorado on January 22, 1961, explaining what I
was
doing. In the course of the letter I made statements very
much like
those which Ed Meskys remembers: "It is a touchy thing to
work on
moderns (writers)" I said, "for two reasons. First, many of
them
are still writing and there is no assurance that their most important
contributions
are behind them. Secondly, most of them are still alive and I
am
personally acquainted with them. While naturally, you don't
select
anyone to write about who isn't a top-grade performer to begin with,
still,
it seems to be human nature to resent any allusions to weaknesses even
after you have spent thousands of words exalting their genius."

I enclosed a list
of fifteen questions with the following disclaimers: "I have
been
reading on it (the Heinlein article) for the past five weeks, starting
[with] all your stories in chronological order and at present am up
around
1947 . . . I am writing you, just in case there is some point
you
want to underscore in the event that you might fill in any
gaps.
You don't have to reply if you are too busy. You don't have
to answer
any questions you don't want to for personal or business reasons."

The question might
reasonably be asked, how can one cover a subject like Heinlein with
only
fifteen questions. The answer is that I brought almost 30
years of
background of science fiction to the subject, including everything by
or
about Heinlein known to exist. The answers were hopefully to
give
me fresh material previously not published or provide missing elements
of incomplete but possibly very important knowledge.
Furthermore,
I was dealing with an important and busy writer. If I wanted
to get
any cooperation I had to minimize the amount of work he had to
do.
If he voluntarily wished to give me more, that was my good luck, but if
he did not wish to, I would gracefully bow out and go ahead with what I
had.

The reply, only
a few days later on January 25, 1961, was surprising. The
first line
was: "Biographies are for dead people."

"I wish you would
postpone this until I am dead; I don't like it, I don't want it, and I
won't help. Criticism of my published works I cannot object
to .
. . but I wish to Christ that you would not discuss me the person."

He then proceeded
to answer all my questions at a length of 5,000 words, with the proviso
that none of it be printed. His purpose was to make certain
that
my facts were accurate for material I obtained elsewhere that might be
wrong.

He also asked
that I not refer to his first wife for very strong personal reasons.

I replied to him
in a letter started February 5, 1961 and concluded March 30, 1961, by
which
time the article had been completed and sent to the printer.
I let
him know that I was well aware of the clever trick he had played by
answering
all my questions with the proviso that the information not be
used.
"In one respect your letter is very unfair to me," I said, "inasmuch as
it presents a certain amount of material, not of a personal nature,
concerning
the background of your stories which I not only know but in greater
detail,
but which, if I now use, I will appear to be breaking a
confidence.
You rope off areas of material, none of which I can
print, request
special treatment, and give me nothing in return."

The truth was
that his cleverness had elicited admiration, and that I understood his
particular problem. As an outfront leader and a controversial
one
in science fiction, the amount of incredible error, stupidity, envy,
outright
viciousness, outrageous assumptions, invasion of privacy he had been
subjected
to through the years -- and I had read a very large percentage of it --
turned sour even the generous praise and appreciation that he also
received.
It reaches a point where one is forced to say, don't praise me, don't
damn
me, and whatever you do stay out of my personal life and read my
stories
if you like them, and don't read them if you don't.

The original magazine
version of my article was roughly 5,000 words in length, the book
inclusion
was expanded to about 8,000 words. I could never have done an
exhaustive
biography and criticism in that space of an author who had written so
much
and made so important a contribution and influence on the
field.
I had more than I needed without the material in his letter.
Yet,
for the record, my piece was the longest and most comprehensive done on
Heinlein up to the date of its publication. This is not so
much a
boast but a criticism of the field.

On July 22, 1961,
Heinlein, having read the article wrote: "I thought that your
article
about me and my writings was a swell job." He also enjoyed
the expanded
version which appeared in 1966. More important, we became
good friends.
He has, on a number of occasions, invited me and my wife to select
little
gatherings when he was in New York, which were memorable not just for
him
and his wife Ginny, but for some of the unusual people he
knew. As
a host he is difficult to top. One time, when my wife was
taken ill
during a vacation in Colorado Springs, he took her to the house until
she
felt better without any prior notice of our arrival.

Heinlein's sensitivity
is all the more understandable when one faces the fact, that even in
your
commentary, Ed Meskys, you make an error which would certainly irritate
him. You said his first wife died in childbirth.
Now I don't
know whether his first wife is alive or dead, but I do know that it is
impossible that she died in childbirth, if only for her age, but you go
right ahead and relate an absolute incorrect assumption that you picked
up somewhere and show that it influenced his stories.

In the case of
Alexei Panshin, he was young and overzealous and pursued information
about
Heinlein's personal life like a bull in a china closet. He
learned
about relatives, either borrowed or tried to borrow their personal
correspondence
of Heinlein's from them. Heinlein was horrified, after all he
was
scarcely dead and fair game for researchers. Personal
information
obviously can sometimes be the source of legal, social or economic
trouble
to one or more of the persons involved. My personal first
contact
with Panshin was when he wrote me a letter asking me for everything I
had
about Heinlein for a book he planned to write. When he did
not receive
a reply he attacked me viciously in YANDRO. Yet, in his
letter, he
not only did not bother to sign his name, but did not include a return
address and I had never heard of him previously. I still have
the
letter. He is older and more considerate now, but this
explains his
earlier problem with Heinlein.

In recent years,
Heinlein has granted very important interviews to Neil Schumann, Bruce
Franklin, Frank M. Robinson and several others, but with the
understandable
attitude that he only wants to give information to responsible
individuals
under civilized conditions.

If I were to position
the SF reader politically, I would say that they tend to be a little
left
of center, though not in the sense that the Futurians were back in the
late thirties and early forties. More accurately, they tend
to be
humanists, learning more toward human needs than toward religion and
politics.
Therefore they tend to frequently resent some of Heinlein's viewpoints,
which tend to strike them as provocative. Those, like myself,
who
have some association with Heinlein, discover a considerate, generous,
thoughtful human being. I have known other writers and
critics whose
works are the soul of humanity, but who act like bastards. It
is
not difficult for me to make a personal preference.